WASHINGTON, June 11 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Thursday he is nominating Jay Clayton, the chief prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, to be the next director of national intelligence, following pushback from U.S. lawmakers over Trump’s pick to fill the role temporarily.
“Few people anywhere in the Legal Community are respected at the level of Jay. I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
Clayton’s official biography says that he is a former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chairman who as a prosecutor has handled prominent cases, including the indictment on narco-terrorism charges of deposed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
But it shows that Clayton has no intelligence background or traditional national security experience.
It was not immediately clear if his selection to the permanent post of top U.S. spy would end Democratic opposition to Trump’s choice of loyalist Bill Pulte to be the interim director of national security and break a Capitol Hill impasse over renewing a foreign surveillance program that expires on Friday.
The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday rejected a short-term extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that Trump has sought.
Trump said Pulte, the head of the federal housing agency, would take over as acting director on June 19 to replace Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned effective June 30.
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